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A Forsaken Cry on the Cross:
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lemá sabachtháni?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Mar 15:34 (See also Matt 27:46)
This verse causes problems for people. Atheists and skeptics like to bring it up as a problem for Christianity. Could a loving God the Father really forsake His Son, Jesus Christ? If Jesus was really God then how could He utter words of desperation? Wasn’t all this the point of the cross?
Jesus was fully God and fully man (Phil 2:5-8). He drew attention to Psalm 22 for a purpose:
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning? Psalm 22:1
Many theologians note that this is a Messianic Psalm. Non Christian Jewish commentators deny it. They insist Psalm 22 refers to King David’s suffering and feeling of abandonment. They are correct. However, it’s far more than that. There are elements of the Psalm which cannot fit David’s example. Walter Kaiser chimes in:
David did experience unusual suffering, but under a revelation from God he witnesses suffering of one of his offspring, presumably the last in that promised line, that far transcends anything that came his way.
~ The Messiah in the Old Testament
Kaiser compares the similarity of Psalm 22:8 with Matt 27:43. Of these two verses, E. W. Hengstenberg wrote that: “Both passages so literally correspond, that the resemblance cannot possibly be regarded as the result of accident.”
Kaiser then notes the mood change at v 22. “The test has been passed and the victory won.” Note especially verses 24-31. Of these he writes:
Thus, the death and sufferings of this one who came in David’s line and who suffered far more than David ever did is the means by which God will usher in his universal rule and reign over everything. In fact every kingdom of the world will be given to him; nothing will be left outside his domain. Even those who have gone down into the dust (i.e., have died) will one day kneel before him (v29). [Note also Phil 2:10] (pp 116-117)
And again:
It is no coincidence that the so-called fourth word on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ and the sixth word, ‘It is finished,’ both come from this Psalm. It indicates that on the cross the mind of our Lord was instructed, comforted, and encouraged by the contents of this Psalm. [Psalm 22:31; John 19:30]
(pp 116-117)
There’s another reason Jesus cited Psalm 22. In his book, The Flow of the Psalms
Psalm 22 is the “Pinnacle Psalm” within the cluster. It is also the “Focal Messianic Psalm.” Psalms 20 and 21 speak of “Messiah’s Kingship” while Psalms 23 and 24 speak of “Yahweh’s Kingship.” Psalm 22 is the “Combined Kingship of the two preceding and two following Psalms. Robertson calls the group the “Poetic Pyramid.” They are “Kingship Psalms” which respond to Messianic Psalm 18. You can download a free chart of Robertson’s “Flow of the Psalms” HERE. It’s a fascinating study!
Jesus was indeed suffering as a man. However, He knew exactly what He was doing when he drew attention to Psalm 22.
Sadly, it isn’t just non-Christian Jewish scholars who reject Psalm 22 as being Messianic. Some professing Christians are uncomfortable with connecting the cross to our sin. One Huff Post columnist (Christian Piatt) doesn’t find these notions personally “satisfying.” Apparently it “makes for great mythology”, but “unreliable theology.” He doesn’t like the idea that any of God’s creation is born with “the capacity to do something the Creator cannot endure.” Piatt writes:
Did we hit an imaginary “red line” at which point god was fed up? Or was it an issue of severity? Had we, perhaps as a group, finally performed enough really bad sins that God saw us as repulsive?…So if, indeed God created humanity knowing we would experience this intolerable fall from grace, it seems that both Jesus and we were set up from the start.
In fact God’s plan of redemption was announced after the first sin (Genesis 3). Piatt is allowing his personal feelings and disbelief to overrule revelation. He draws from Peter Rollins’ book, Insurrection:
It was only once I read Rollins’ take on the crucifixion that I found a peace with the story that made sense on a deep level for me. While some find his writing unsettling, there is something very liberating in how he challenges – or even smashes to splinters – the limiting boundaries we build around God…
Another writer states that Rollins is skeptical about the extent we can really know God. Speaking of Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck who have critiqued Rollins in their book Why We’re Not Emergent, she observes:
I guess I am just more comfortable….with the idea that there is a lot more about God that we don’t know, than we do ‘know,’ from Scripture. And I’m open to the possibility that what we think we know may in fact be wrong!
She writes:
Rollins favours a narrative approach to Scripture and explicitly rejects the readings of Scripture that many Protestants, including most evangelicals, have held dear. The bible for Rollins is certainly not to be taken literally, nor does he favour the Reformed tradition’s theory of penal substitutionary atonement.
Note: Pyromaniacs contributor, Phil Johnson, has reviewed Why We’re Not Emergent HERE
God has revealed Himself in Scripture. These people have rejected God’s Word and co-opted an entirely different Jesus. The cross demands a response and commitment which is uncomfortable for them. They find the idea of Christ’s dying for their sins repugnant! So they’ve made up a “comfortable theology.” Paul wrote to Timothy warning about this (2 Tim 4:1-4). See also Gal 1:6-8.
Scripture is clear and consistent throughout Old and New Testaments. The following verses are a small sampling of sin and the need for redemption: Exodus 12:21-23; Num 21:9; Isaiah 53:4, Isaiah 53:10; Luke 1:78; John 3:14-16; Rom 5:1-2, 12, 17-18; 1 Cor 5:7, 1 Cor 15:3-4; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:13 etc.
In his Systematic Theology Volume 2: The Beauty of Christ – a Trinitarian Vision
Douglas Kelly writes:
Jesus on the cross experiences the second death (indicated by his cry ‘My God…why hast thou forsaken me?’) before the first death (indicated when he releases his spirit from the body to the Father). He dies the second death first in his total identification with the wickedness and filth of all the guilt brought on by every sin, both original and actual, with nothing between that infinite guilt and the righteous wrath of a holy God. (p 378)
Kelly notes the darkness which followed Christ’s death (Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44-46). Whatever caused this darkness was under the direct control and precise timing of God. It helped to “show that his holy Son was in outer darkness during those hours in his personal experience as our sin-bearer.” (pp 380-381).
He draws a connection to this darkness by citing Jesus words to the high priest: “…this is your hour and the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53). Kelly writes:
The outer blackness of God-forsakenness in hell is the significance of the darkness that fell upon the land during the last three hours of the crucifixion of Christ. It is as though the one who said ‘I am the light of the world’ is somehow being blotted out in the blackness of the negativity of hell, as he takes on all the darkness of sin that has been committed against the light.
Because he is an infinite person, his suffering of hell for these three hours of outer darkness have been more than sufficient to exhaust all the fires and dark horrors of the infernal realm, as certainly as though a finite person had been consigned to its dread conditions for an endless eternity. (p 381)
What an awesome God! Can we possibly grasp the enormous significance of all this?
As we noted above, the Bible is clear about the consequence of sin and the need for redemption. The question is: Do we trust God’s Word or the imaginations of popular writers who reject it?
The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? Jer 17:9
What are the consequences of denying Christ’s redemptive work on the cross? Are you prepared to face them? Do you find Christ’s sacrifice repugnant? One day you can tell Him why (John 5:22; Acts 10:42, 17:31; 2 Cor 5:10).
Now is the time to decide to put your faith in Christ, not in another man’s heart.
Your eternity will depend upon it.
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